The purposes of this paper are: (1) to identify uses of the term social competence for preschool and early school children, with origins directly in research, and (2) to formulate a definition of social competence reflecting consensus across three different research perspectives. From an ethnological perspective, social competence consists of adaptive interactions in the natural environment provided by classrooms. The second research perspective construes competence in the framework of structural theory of personality and as dimensions or clusters of task oriented behavior, extroversion, or the use of opportunities in the classroom. The social theory perspective analyzes competence as ability to assume roles and to express varied repertoires pursuant to goal attainment. Theory, background, definition of behavior, methodology, and related research for each perspective is included. A modified definition of social competence emerges from the combination of the three separate perspectives and includes such concepts as purposiveness, adaptiveness, flexibility, and analysis of rules governing social interactions. (Author/DE)

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